T-Mobile Joins Alphabet’s Project Loon In Puerto Rico

Earlier this month, Alphabet’s Project Loon deployed a series of LTE balloons in Puerto Rico, working with AT&T to help bring connectivity back to the island following widespread devastation from Hurricane Maria in September.

Now, T-Mobile has joined the project, providing their customers with LTE-equipped smartphones on the island with basic internet access and texting.

In a Tweet, the team behind Project Loon said that since the project launched over on October 20th, they’ve “delivered basic Internet connectivity to tens of thousands of people.” With another provider, that number will rise as residents wait for the island territory’s basic infrastructure to be restored, a process that is expected to take months.

The project first launched in 2013, and uses a series of stratospheric balloons to help deliver internet access to rural and disaster areas. Earlier this year, Alphabet deployed the project in Peru to restore internet access after a series of devastating floods.